Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 18, 1907.djvu/440

 398 The Principles of Fasting.

morning meal, they refrain from all food till the evening. Similar fasting is observed on every return of the same day of the week, till the obsequies take place." ^ Among the Bogos of Eastern Africa a son must fast three days after the death of his father."- On the Gold Coast it is the custom for the near relatives of the deceased to per- form a long and painful fast, and sometimes they can only with difficulty be induced to have recourse to food again.^ So also in Dahomey they must fast during the " corpse time," or mourning.* Among the Brazilian Paressi the relatives of a dead person remain for six days at his grave, carefully refraining from taking food.^ Among the aborigines of the Antilles children used to fast after the death of a parent, a husband after the death of his. wife, and a wife after the death of her husband.*^ In some Indian tribes of North America it is the custom for the relatives of the deceased to fast till the funeral is over." Among the Snanaimuq, a tribe of the Coast Salish. after the death of a husband or wife the surviving partner must not eat anything for three or four days.^ In one of the interior divisions of the Salish of British Columbia, the Stlatlumh, the next four days after a funeral feast are spent by the members of the household of the deceased person in fasting, lamenting and ceremonial ablutions.^

1 Harkness, Description of a Singular Race inhabiting the Neilgher7-y Hills, p. 97.

"^ Munzinger, Die Sitten ttnd das Recht der Bogos, p. 29.

'Ciuickshank, Eighteen Years on the Gold Coast, ii. 218.

^ Burton, Mission to Gelele, ii. 163.

^von den Steinen, Unter den Natwvolkern Zentral-Brasiliens, p. 435. Cf. ibid. p. 339 (Bakairi).

•^Du Tertre, Histoire generale des Antilles, ii. 371.

'Charlevoix, Voyage to North- America, ii. 187.


 * Boas, in Fifth Report on the North- Western Tribes of Canada, p. 45.

9 Tout, 'Ethnology of the Stlatlumh of British Columbia,' 'm. Jour. Anthr. Inst. XXXV. 138.